Mr. Fortune

by Sylvia Townsend Warner

  The bulk that lay on top of him was the harmonium. He was pinned beneath it—presently the flames would reach him and he would be burnt to death.

  He felt no kind of fear or emotion, only a calm certainty as to what was happening and with it a curious detached satisfaction at being able to understand it all so well. The flames would enclose him and he would be burnt to death, unless the ground opened first and swallowed him up. Then he remembered Lueli. What of him? He struggled again, but he could not get out from under the harmonium. The struggle reminded him that he was a human being, not only an intelligence but a creature defencelessly sentient that must perish by fire. Fear came on him, and self-pity, and with it a sort of pique; for he said to himself: “I know now he never cared for me. He has made off and left me to burn, just what I should expect.” And at the same moment he heard himself cry out: “Save yourself, Lueli! Be quick, child! Never mind me, I am all right.” And then, seeing Lueli bending over him, he said in a voice of command: “Lueli, I tell you to save yourself. Get out of this while there’s time.”

  He saw Lueli in the light of the flames, he saw him put his shoulder against the harmonium and begin to heave it up; he saw the muscles leap out along the thrusting body—all with a sort of anger and impatience because his friend would not attend to what he was saying. Even when the harmonium was jolted backward and he was freed he lay where he had fallen, half-stunned, with no definite thought except to compel Lueli to obey him and get away before the next tremor sent the whole hut crashing down on them.

  He felt Lueli put his arms round his shoulders, shaking him and hauling him on to his feet, and he noticed with surprise how stern the boy looked, not frightened, but extraordinarily stern, like a stranger, like an angel. The earth began to quake again, another sheaf of thatch slid from the roof and the flames leaped up to seize upon it. Mr. Fortune suddenly came out of his stupor. Stumbling and losing his footing on the wavering floor he caught hold of Lueli’s arm and together they ran out of the hut.

  Three times in crossing the dell they were thrown to the earth. There was something horribly comic in this inability to stand upright. It was as though they were being tossed in a blanket. They did not speak to each other; all thought of speech was forbidden by the appalling novelty of the uproar that was going on, rumblings and bellowings underground, trees beating against each other or crashing to the earth, the cries of terror-struck creatures. Lueli dragged him on, hastening towards the mountain. There was a little path that led up by the ravine, difficult to mount at any time and more difficult still in an earthquake.

  “Why do you go this way?” Mr. Fortune asked, when the tremor had subsided enough for him to be able to remember how to speak. Lueli turned on him a face of terror.

  “The sea,” he said. “The sea.”

  Mr. Fortune had forgotten the sea. Now he remembered what he had read in books of adventure as a boy: how after an earthquake comes a tidal wave, a wall of water frantically hurling itself upon the land. And not daring to look behind him he followed Lueli up the steep path as though the sea were at his heels.

  At last they came out upon a little grassy platform overlooking the ravine. They were only just in time, for the earthquake began again. They sat side by side, holding on to one another. Mr. Fortune discovered that it was a brilliant and impassive moonlight night. He looked towards the ocean. It seemed strangely calm, incredibly vast, more solid than the tormented earth. A glittering path of silver across it reflected the moon.

  They were close to the cataract. Tonight, instead of the usual steady roar of falling water, the noise was coming in curious gouts of sound, now loud, now almost nothing. He turned his eyes and saw the slender column of falling water all distorted, and flapping like a piece of muslin in a draught. For some reason this sight was overwhelmingly piteous and a sort of throe hollowed him as if he were going to cry.

  At every shock thousands of birds flew up from the tossing tree-tops. In wild excitement they circled overhead, flying in droves, sweeping past with a whirr of innumerable wings, soaring higher and higher, then suddenly diving aslant, shot from the wake of their own vortex. Their continual angry clamour, passionate and derisive, swayed above the uproar of trampling earth and clashing forest. One bird came volleying so close to Mr. Fortune that he saw its beak flash in the moonlight and put up his hand to shield his face. As it passed it screamed in his ear like a railway whistle. He thought: “I should like to scream like that.”

  Although he and Lueli sat holding on to each other, Mr. Fortune had no sense of companionship. In this appalling hour there did not seem to be any one alive save himself. He was the Last Man, alone in an universe which had betrayed him, abandoned on the face of an earth which had failed under his feet. He was isolated even from himself. There was no Mr. Fortune now, a missionary who had been a bank clerk, an Englishman, and a member of the Church of England. Such a one would have been behaving quite differently. At the best he might have been behaving much better, he might have been in the village keeping troth with his fellow-men; at the least he would have been trembling for his own skin and calling on God. But this man sat on the reeling mountain side with but one sensation: a cold-hearted excitement, a ruthless attentive craving that at the height of horror would welcome another turn of the screw, another jab of the spur, another record broken.

  The shocks were now coming so continuously that it was scarcely possible to say when one followed another; but he went on keeping count and comparing them, and if they seemed to be slackening off he was disappointed. He sat with his eyes shut, for so he could both feel and hear more unmitigatedly. At intervals he looked out seaward for the coming of the tidal wave. But the sea was always calm, as coldly calm as himself and a great deal more solid. “Yet it must come,” he told himself. “It is certain to come.” And after a terrific shock, accompanied by sounds of rending and shattering as though the whole island were splitting asunder, he thought with certainty: “It will come now,” and opened his eyes once more.

  Something had happened. There was a difference in the air, in the colour of the night. Had dawn come already? His faculties were so cramped with attention that he could scarcely receive a new sensation, still less analyse it. Yet he felt that there was something he must account for, some discrepancy between this light and the light of dawn. The sun rose—yes, the sun rose in the east, over the sea: but this light seemed to come from behind him. He turned and saw the sky lit up with the light of fire.

  “The mountain is on fire!” he cried out. And at the sound of his own words he suddenly understood what had happened. The mountain was on fire. Its ancient fires had come back to it, Fanua was once more an active volcano.

  Below the bed of the cold and heavy sea, below the foundations of the great deep, into an unimaginable hell of energy and black burning those fires had withdrawn. They had rejoined the imprisoned original frenzy that lies in the heart of the earth, working and wallowing in unknown tides. And once more the fiery spring had mounted, revolting against the encompassing pressure, fumbling in darkness, melting its way, flooding along its former channels until now it flared on the crest of the island, brightening and brightening upon the sky, a glow of such intense and vivid rose-colour that by contrast the moonlight turned to an icily-piercing blue. Cloud upon cloud of smoke rolled upwards, and at every fresh surge of fire the vault of heaven appeared to grow more vast and haughty, and the stars seemed recoiling into space. The mountain shouted and bellowed as though it were triumphing because its fires had come back to it.

  Mr. Fortune leapt to his feet. He waved his arms, he stood on tiptoe in order to see better. Though the next moment might engulf him he was going to make the most of this. But there was no need to be so provident, so economical. This bonfire had been preparing for decades, it would not burn out in a minute or two. Realising this, he sat down again and relinquished himself to an entire and passive contemplation, almost lulled by the inexhaustible procession of fire and smoke, warming his mind at the lonely
terrific beauty of a mountain burning by night amid an ocean.

  Clouds began to gather at daybreak. Only a pallor showed where the sun groped upwards among them, and the sea, which but a few hours ago had looked so lustrous, and solid like a floor of onyx, was now pale and weltering.

  The earthquake seemed to be over; sometimes the ground gave a sort of a twitch and a tremble like an animal that dreams a bad dream; but this happened at longer and longer intervals and each disturbance was fainter than the last. Except for the plume of foul smoke that issued from the crater and sagged over the mountain side as it was checked by the morning airs there was nothing to distinguish this daybreak from any other, unless, thought Mr. Fortune, that it was a peculiarly dreary one.

  He was chilled with watching, and oppressed with the indigestion common to those who have sat up all night. He was also bruised with so much falling about, and his ribs ached from being crushed under the harmonium. But his excitement, which in spite of all the adventures of the last twelve hours was still a deferred excitement, unsatisfied and defrauded of its prey, wouldn’t let him settle down into a reasonable fatigue, but still kept his muscles strung up and his vision strained.

  It seemed an age since he had last thought of Lueli. He looked at him now as though from a long way off, and rather crossly, and it seemed as though his vague irritation were in a way to be justified. For Lueli lay as though asleep.

  That Lueli should sleep while he waked was enough. It showed that he was inconsiderate, incapable of true sympathy, an inferior being who hadn’t got indigestion. Mr. Fortune heaved a loud short sigh. Lueli didn’t stir. No doubt of it. He was asleep. He lay so that Mr. Fortune could only see the curve of his cheek and half his mouth, which bore the sad resigned expression of those who slumber. But bending a little over him to make sure, Mr. Fortune discovered that the boy’s eyes were open and fixed mournfully upon the empty and unquiet sea. There was something so devastated about that blank and unmoving gaze that the priest was awed. Why did Lueli look so old, so set and austere? The face so well known seemed that of a stranger; and suddenly he recalled Lueli bending over him in the burning hut as he lay helpless under the harmonium, and remembered that then his face had worn the same look, grave and stern.

  Lueli had saved his life at the risk of his own, he had shown that greatest love which makes a man ready to lay down his life for his friend. And now the rescued one sat coldly beside the rescuer, eyeing his unknown sorrow, and but a moment ago seeking some pretext for scorning and disliking him.

  “What a hateful creature I am!” thought Mr. Fortune, “and how this earthquake has shown me up! But Lueli has behaved well throughout, he saved my life, he kept his head, he didn’t want to cheer and behave like a tripper when the mountain exploded.” And in his thoughts he begged Lueli’s pardon.

  Still Lueli lay beside him, staring out to sea with the same mournful look. His silence was like a reproach to Mr. Fortune. It seemed to say: “You have slighted me unjustly and now I must forget you.” Mr. Fortune waited patiently, he had a confused idea that his patience now must repair his former impatience. But at length his love could endure no longer, and he laid his hand gently on Lueli’s arm. There was no response. Lueli didn’t even turn his eyes.

  “He is tired out,” thought the priest. “That is why he looks so miserable.” He said aloud: “Wake up, Lueli, you will make yourself ill if you lie there any longer so still on the cold ground. Wake up. Rouse yourself. It is all over now.” And he gave him an encouraging slap on the shoulder.

  At last Lueli sighed and stretched himself and turned and met Mr. Fortune’s anxious gaze.

  “I think the earthquake is over,” he remarked in an everyday voice.

  “Just what I said a minute ago,” thought Mr. Fortune. “But he doesn’t know I said it. What can he have been thinking of that he didn’t hear me?”

  He still felt slightly worried about the boy.

  “We had better walk about a little,” he said. “Ow! I’ve got cramp.”

  Taking Lueli’s arm he staggered down the little rocky path. The morning was cold and now it began to rain. The rain was dirty rain, full of smuts and fine grit from the volcano. It might have been raining in London or Manchester.

  Exercise soon restored Mr. Fortune to an ordinary frame of mind. He looked with interested horror at the wood they passed through. Many trees were uprooted or hung tottering with their roots half out of the ground, the shrubs and grass were crushed and trampled, boughs and torn creepers were scattered everywhere. It was as though some savage beast had run amuck through the glades, tearing and havocking and rooting up the ground with its horns. Lueli picked up a dead parrot, and once they skirted by a swarm of angry bees. Their hive had been broken in the fall of its tree, the honeycomb was scattered on the grass, and the affronted insects were buzzing hither and thither, angrier than ever because now the rain was making its way through the dishevelled green roof.

  “But it will soon quench them,” thought Mr. Fortune. “And if some bees and some parrots are the only deaths by this earthquake we shall be well out of it.”

  He was uneasy about the villagers, all the more so because he felt that he had run away from them in their hour of peril. Also he wanted to talk to some one about the stream of lava which he knew would soon flow down from the crater. “Provided it only flows to the south!” he thought. He questioned Lueli but could learn nothing; Lueli had never been in an earthquake before, he had heard the old men of the island talking about them but the last earthquake had happened long before his day.

  On nearing the village Mr. Fortune heard a great hubbub, but it was impossible to discover from the noise of every one talking at once whether they were lamenting or merely excited; all he could conclude was that at any rate they were not all dead.

  When he appeared, with Lueli following sedately behind, a crowd of gesticulating islanders rushed forward, all waving their arms and shouting. The thought leapt up in his mind: “Suppose they think that I am responsible for this earthquake? Perhaps they will kill me to appease the mountain!”

  He had never felt less in the mood for martyrdom. The last twelve hours had given him more than enough to cope with. Yet even if the fervour of his faith were lacking, he could make a shift to die decently: and he stiffened himself and went forward. But Lueli? Suppose they wanted to martyr him too? No! That he would not allow. While there was a kick left in him he would see to that. He glanced back as though to reassure him, but as he caught sight of him he remembered that Lueli was not a Christian, nor ever had been one. What a sell if they should sacrifice him before there was time to explain! Well, this made it even more urgent a matter to defend him: martyrdom was one thing, miscarriage of justice quite another.

  But Mr. Fortune need not have been agitated. The islanders had no intention but to welcome him and Lueli, and to rejoice round them over their safety, which they did with the pleasanter excitement and conviction, since naturally in the emotions of the night they had not given them a thought till now.

  Half-smothered and quite deafened, Mr. Fortune pushed through the throng, saying: “Where is Ori?” For having lived so long on the island he had fallen into the proper respect for a chief, and depended on Ori rather more than he would have liked to admit. “He is almost like another European”—so the priest explained to himself. At this juncture Ori was behaving very much like an European, for he was partaking of one of those emergency breakfasts, sketchy in form but extremely solid and comprehensive in content, with which the white races consummate and, as it were, justify any fly-by-night catastrophe. Seeing Mr. Fortune he politely invited him to sit down and take a share. “But the flow of lava?” inquired Mr. Fortune, wiping his mouth. “Do you think it will come this way?” Ori took another handful of stirabout. “There are no signs of it so far, and if it comes this way it will not come here yet.”

  “But do you think it will come this way?”

  “My god says, No.”

  When breakfast was fin
ished Ori got up and went off with the other men of consequence to make an inquisition into the damage done by the pigs. They had come bolting down from the woods and wrought even more serious havoc than the earthquake, which had only shaken down a house or two, whereas the pigs had trespassed into every enclosure and eaten all the provisions. Mr. Fortune felt a little slighted that he was not invited to go too. Apparently Ori did not quite regard him as another Fanuan. “Oh well,” he said, “perhaps they meant it politely, seeing that I had not finished my breakfast.” But though he felt as if he were hungry he had no real appetite, and rising he prepared to walk back to his hut.

  It was as though the earthquake had literally shaken his wits. All his recollections were dislodged and tumbled together; he knew they were there somewhere, but he could not find them—just as he had mislaid the discovery of overnight until, turning to view Lueli as a possible martyr, he beheld and recognised him as the idolater he was and always had been. Now he was walking to the hut in the same kind of oblivion. He must have remembered the lamp tossing its flame up to the roof, the burning sheaves of thatch falling down around him, for he had a very clear vision of Lueli’s face bending over him, so violently modelled by the flames that it had looked like the face, sad and powerful, of a stranger, of an angel. But his thoughts went no further; and even when the smell of charred wood came sadly to his nostrils through the falling rain he did not put two and two together.

  “I wonder if those pigs have messed up my place too,” he said. A sigh out of the air answered him. He had not noticed till then that Lueli was following.

  “Poor Lueli, you must be so tired!” There was no answer and still the boy lagged behind. He must be tired indeed. Mr. Fortune stopped. He was about to speak once more, bidding Lueli to lean on him and take heart, when suddenly the boy shot past him, running desperately, and whispering to himself as he ran as though he were imploring his own mind.